Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance/Proposed decision

Arbitrators active on this case
Active:
 * 1) FayssalF
 * 2) FloNight
 * FT2
 * 1) Jdforrester
 * 2) Jpgordon
 * 3) Kirill Lokshin
 * 4) Matthew Brown (Morven)
 * 5) Newyorkbrad
 * 6) Paul August
 * 7) Sam Blacketer
 * 8) Thebainer
 * 9) UninvitedCompany

Away/inactive: Recused
 * 1) Charles Matthews
 * 2) Deskana
 * 1) Blnguyen

Decision time?
It looks like all the useful evidence and proposals have been out for a while and discussed in as much depth as necessary. At this point the workshop page is getting cluttered and people are running short on patience.

With respect to the Committee for the very difficult situation it faces on another case, the issues here are relatively straightforward. The overall caliber of editor here is among the highest I've ever seen at arbitration, and they've put superb work into this case.

Will a proposed decision be coming soon? Durova Charge! 00:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * We are currently investigating the allegations of gross misrepresentation of sources in detail; until that's done, I doubt we'll begin a formally drafted decision. Kirill 03:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for that response. Durova  Charge! 03:38, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Kirill is correct, as I advised another participant in the case today. One of the things that separates this case from a typical content dispute or edit-war is the allegation that an editor has made not just controversial edits but factually incorrect ones, so we are taking the time to evaluate that. Compare the Sadi Carnot case. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I remember that one. Jehochman Talk 22:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * A dispute over inclusion of a fringe theory is probably a content dispute. An allegation of persistent misrepresentation of sources may be a behavioral problem, but it requires sending some arbitrators or trusted non-parties to the library.  Hence the need for more time. Thatcher 22:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

PHG's attacks
I understand that the arbs are very busy, and that this is a complex case, but I too would like to see things move along. As it is, PHG's behavior is steadily escalating, such as deleting disambig notes, tagging a disambig page as disputed, and accusing other editors of lying. Today, he generated personal attacks against, making references to McCarthyism and Guantanamo, and implying that all of Aramgar's edits have been destructive. This is not only false, but is further disruptive because PHG's behavior is being extremely antagonistic towards one of our more valuable editors, a rather shy scholar who can actually read medieval Latin. Aramgar has even indicated that he is actually holding back from creating some content, simply because he doesn't want to get further involved in this mess.

It's one thing for PHG to attack me, I've got a thick enough skin to handle it, but Aramgar most definitely does not deserve PHG's abuse. :/ --Elonka 21:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * We are working actively on this case. I expect a proposed decision to be drafted very soon. Parties to the case should bear in mind that the committee would look very dimly on an escalation of problematic behavior while the case is pending. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:57, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I expect that I or another arbitrator will be posting a proposed decision this weekend. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Let it be known that the cause of the dispute referred here has now been solved, as it had been shown that a false claim was indeed being made by Elonka and Arangar about a name "Viam agnoscere veritatis" being used for a multiplicity of Papal bulls Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis. Both were making a false claim, intentionally of not, and have been using this claim to motivate a multiplicity of editors to make depositions against me (here, here and the numerous "Viam agnoscere depositions of the Workshop page such as ). It's clear that the discussion heated up (on both sides) but it turns out I was right to dispute their misrepresentation of historical facts. I challenge judgements which are based on such false evidence and manipulation. Another recent case of Elonka obviously misrepresenting sources has been exposed here Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance: how can we but any faith in the accusations made by such an editor? PHG (talk) 10:45, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * PHG, putting aside this particular issue, do you honestly believe that all of the instances where other editors feel you misrepresented sources are simply false? There were many more examples than just this one (in fact my final list didn't include this article at all) where you had faithfully produced a sentence or phrase from a source, but you were missing the gist of what the source actually said.  You tend to rely far to much on words used and far too little on context and content.  Please try to look at what the decision is saying with an open mind; there are many editors out there who would honestly like to work with you, but as with anything, that requires a little give on your part. Shell babelfish 15:09, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Shell, this is just a pattern of mutiple false accusations which have been gathered abusively to try to mount a case against me: I was attacked for creating the Viam agnoscere veritatis letter on the ground that several letters were named that way, but this has proven now to be a false accusation Talk:Viam agnoscere veritatis. I was accused of creating false references, but this also has all proven to be false accusations: I was able to supply exact quote for every of the questionned references, and can even send scans for those who do not want to order the book and would like to see the actual material. All my quotes have been correct, and I've tried to be very precise about what each author actually says. For example, regarding Christopher Tyerman, I think I have been very faithfull to what he says precisely: "Christopher Tyerman, in God's War: A New History of the Crusades, does mention the existence of "The Mongol alliance", although he specifies that in the end it led nowhere,("The Mongol alliance, despite six further embassies to the west between 1276 and 1291, led nowhere" p.816) and turned out to be a "false hope for Outremer as for the rest of Christendom." (pp. 798-799) He further describes successes and failures of this alliance from 1248 to 1291, with Louis IX's early attempts at capturing "the chimera of a Franco-Mongol anti-Islamic alliance", Bohemond VI's alliance with the Mongols and their joint victories, and Edward's largely unsuccessful attempts." in User:PHG/Alliance. Same thing for Peter Jackson: "Peter Jackson in The Mongols and the West entitles a whole chapter "An ally against Islam: the Mongols in the Near East" and describes all the viscicitudes and the actual limited results of the Mongol alliance." in User:PHG/Alliance. All of this is true, and I think faithfully represents what they actually say, although of course we may have slight divergences on interpretation. Elonka has been trying to give a spin to all this, claiming that I misrepresented these sources, but that's totally untrue. I am actually very meticulous with my sources, and besides some inescapable discrepencies in each contributors's interpretations, I think I have always been very truthfull to sources. It is only a pattern of Elonka relentlessly spinning the truth and constantly throwing accusations at someone so as to try to garner support. She is well known for that, and I am not the first one . I don't think it is a good thing for Wikipedia to allow this kind behaviour. Regards. PHG (talk) 15:56, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

This is a difficult and regrettable case, because I believe that PHG is editing in good faith and believes he is making strong positive contributions to Wikipedia. The Arbitration Committee does not rule on content issues and would not impose sanctions against any user merely because a good-faith disagreement existed concerning what a given source or group of sources should be read to say or because of any other disagreement concerning an article or group of articles. In this case, we did not take anyone's word for it that there were issues with PHG's editing. Arbitrators spent substantial time reviewing the evidence and (per the question to parties that was placed on the workshop a couple of weeks ago and the responses) in checking several of the disputed quotations against the original books and articles. Unfortunately, we found that the concerns as summarized in the decision had merit and that the remedies contained in the proposed decision were the best step forward to ensure the reliability of the encyclopedia. This is not, by any means, a step that I or any of the other arbitrators took either lightly or happily. Finally, I will add that at least speaking for myself, the abstruse dispute over "Viam agnoscere veritatis" played no role one way or the other in resolving the case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Userspace
Newyorkbrad, thanks for your work on the current decision. I realize that the other arbs haven't weighed in yet, but I did have one question regarding enforcement. Currently PHG is maintaining a couple POV versions of articles in his own userspace:
 * User:PHG/Franco-Mongol alliance (full version) (PHG's 200K version, which he continues to expand)
 * User:PHG/Mongol alliances in the Middle-East (previously deleted at AfD)

Does anyone have a recommendation on how those should be handled? --Elonka 00:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If these pages aren't covered by the arbitrators' decision, they can be sent to Miscellany for deletion. --Akhilleus (talk) 00:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * If it's just a matter of two pages, then they can be MfD'd, after PHG has a chance to copy them off-wiki. If there were many such pages, then it might make sense to deal with them in the decision, so let us know if there are (or become) many more. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I challenge the deletions of these two pages from my Userspace. These are highly documented works, which I spent months working on, with in one case more than 400 proper references. PHG (talk) 10:47, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * PHG, please see: USER. Specifically: "While userpages and subpages can be used as a development ground for generating new content, this space is not intended to indefinitely archive your preferred version of disputed or previously deleted content." The pages have been discussed, the community consensus is that they are not appropriate, and therefore the pages should be deleted. I am sorry, I know that this cannot be pleasant. If you wish, you may request deleting them yourself by placing db-owner at the top of the pages.  Otherwise, after this case is closed, they will be nominated for a community discussion of whether or not they should be deleted, but I can pretty much guarantee that the decision will be a firm "Delete", and you would probably find it a painful discussion to watch.  So it would be better if you deleted them yourself.  If you still want to maintain the information on the web, you could always move them to a personal webpage of some sort.  There are plenty of free ones available, and there might also be a page at one of the Wikia communities that might be willing to host some of it (maybe the WarWiki?)  But the pages can't stay on Wikipedia. I acknowledge that you likely created the pages in good faith, and they may find a good home somewhere else on the web, but Wikipedia is not the right place for them. --Elonka 22:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

PHG seems to be using his userspace to archive a host of older versions of articles. In addition to the two pages Elonka mentioned there are also:


 * User:PHG/1297-1304 – Franco-Mongol content; an article which was AfD’d here.
 * User:PHG/ID – Early version of Indo-Greek kingdom, last actively worked on in March 2006.
 * User:PHG/East-West_contacts – 50k article on Alexander the Great last worked on in July 2006.
 * User:PHG/HID – Indo-Greek kings, last worked on in January 2006; apparently a copy of Timeline of Indo-Greek Kingdoms.
 * User:PHG/Indo-Corynthian capital - early copy of Indo-Corinthian capital; last worked on in March 2006.
 * User:PHG/Stair riser – contains material found in Byzantine-Mongol alliance, last worked on In January 2008. Kafka Liz (talk) 23:07, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting, and thanks for the list, Kafka Liz. I recommend that once this case closes (which appears to be imminent), we prod all of the history-related articles in PHG's userspace. If nothing else is done, they'll just "go away" after 5 days, which should be sufficient time for him to mirror them off-wiki if he so desires. If PHG disagrees with any of the prods, we can then move to MfD if necessary.  But I think that prods will probably be a less traumatic way of handling things. --Elonka 23:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Add Template:East-West relations to the list for deletion. No changes since 2006, and doesn't appear to be being used anywhere (except PHG's userspace). --Elonka 00:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * There is also Template:Franco-Mongol_alliance, which I was surprised to find still existed. Kafka Liz (talk) 00:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

(followup) We have attempted prods, but PHG is disagreeing with some of them so we are moving to MfD. If anyone would like to participate, the link is here: Miscellany for deletion/PHG's archived articles. --Elonka 02:14, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Concern with the restriction
I am so glad to see some sanity coming out of the craziness that has been this case, but I wonder if a few tweaks might be necessary for the restriction statement. I think we're seeing the problem start to spill over to more general (but still related) articles such as Christianity in Asia, Christianity in China, Islamic science and the like. There's also the concern that since this seems to be a systematic problem of PHG's that the problem is going to reoccur elsewhere or be found in older contributions (we're only back 6 months now). Perhaps the wording "interpreted broadly" like we see in a lot of similar restrictions and a caveat that additional areas can be added by uninvolved administrators if PHG is found to be continuing the behavior elsewhere? Thanks for considering. Shell babelfish 06:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I'm recused, but I don't think any attempt to claim that the restriction would not apply to medieval "history" sections in general articles would go down too well.  Blnguyen  ( vote in the photo straw poll ) 06:10, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Please provide a couple of instances (diff vs. source) in which the problem has been broader than the current wording. This needn't be the major project that assembling the evidence page was; two or three examples will do. I would hate to have to ban a longtime contributor from the mainspace altogether but we will go where the evidence leads us. Views of other parties would also be helpful here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Off the top of my head, I'd point at Christianity in Asia and Roman Catholicism in Asia. Both are coatrack articles created by PHG, and were effective duplicates of each other.  I've been working on some cleanup, but there are a long list of PHG-related articles needing cleanup,  and I can only do so much at one time, especially since he's still making new ones almost as fast as the old ones are cleaned up (today's new coatrack is Arabo-Norman civilization, and even a simple Google search will show you that that's not exactly a wide-spread term).


 * Towards improving the restriction, could we perhaps extend it from "history" to "history and religion"? --Elonka 16:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * This is really a shame and an obvious attempt by Elonka to try to discredit anything I can write. All my contributions are properly referenced from published sources, and if sometimes we can have differences in interpretation, nobody has been able to identify a single case of fabrication of sources or whatever (as demonstrated in User:Ealdgyth/Crusades quotes testbed). These Christianity in Asia and Roman Catholicism in Asia articles are highly referenced and proper. So is Arabo-Norman civilization, although we can discuss about the appropiate title. Just because a subject has few references on Internet certainly does not means that it is improper, especially when there are numerous published sources about it. PHG (talk) 10:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * PHG, I think you missed the point of my subpage. It wasn't so much to test whether your quotations were correct, but to point out that all those "alliance" quotations were pointing to different alignments of allied groups and to different time frames when the alliances opperated. That's why it had those columns for time frame and the country that was aligned to the Mongols. It also looked at the exact nature of the sources you were using, and in some cases, tried to find English citations for them, when possible. Ealdgyth | Talk 15:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Dear Ealdgyth. You claimed in your "testbed" that I was creating false references, but this has all proven to be false accusations: I was able to supply exact quote for every of the questionned references, and can even send scans for those who do not want to order the book and would like to see the actual material. All my quotes have been correct, and I've tried to be very precise about what each author actually says. I agree not all authors are perfectly coherent about the timing of the alliance, but most agree on a time span between 1260 to around 1305, the clearest being Jean Richard and Alain Demurger. I don't think that quoting these highly renowned historians, or showing their divergences in terms of timing of the alliance, is any reason to blame the messenger (me). Regards. PHG (talk) 16:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I said in my chart that I couldn't FIND the quotations in the English edition. I did not say I thought you created them in the French editions. (In fact, when you pointed out where they were, I accepted that and pointed out that there are no subchapter titles in the English edition.) If you read my section of the evidence, I said I was using the chart to support my "Original research" subheading. I did not enter any evidence at all concerning false quotations or misrepresenting sources. Ealdgyth | Talk 16:15, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * So do you kindly confirm that all my quotes and references have been confirmed and proper? PHG (talk) 16:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Images
Does the Committee have any guidance with regard to image uploads? In fairness, PHG is a talented amateur photographer whose interests are highly encyclopedic. If he were responsive to feedback about the minority of his uploads that have sourcing/licensing issues then I'd be delighted with his work in that area, but his refusal to seek or accept feedback means that the instances which do cause problems become a time sink. Per my evidence from the other day, this is an issue on Wikipedia as well as Commons. If more evidence is requested regarding en:Wikipedia uploads, please advise. I will be attending a funeral tomorrow but will work out time for more research if that's what's needed here. Durova Charge! 06:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure right now that the image issues warrant an arbitration finding, since as you note the problem appears only on a minority of PHG's uplads, but I am open to rewording remedy 3 to reflect that image contributions are appreciated but only if properly documented. Again, comments from others welcome. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The most important part of this case are the findings of fact, not the remedies. Now that the problem has been documented, the community at large can handle it using ordinary means.  Either PHG will adjust to feedback, or they will experience escalating blocks up to indefinite. Jehochman  Talk 13:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have been glad to contribute a vast quantity of photographs (especially from museum from around the world). Durova duely identified some of my drawings of historical artifacts (a small fraction indeed of my contributions) could be considered as derivative work, especially as I referenced the photographed I was using for material. I wasn't aware of such issues, but it's OK, and I accept that. I will probably redraw these contributions in the future without any link to the original photographs. PHG (talk) 11:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)